HazelStone

So has anyone carmelized dehydrated onions to decent effect? I've tried putting them in soups but they don't seem to get properly softened...

Lent is a handy excuse to foist introduce more vegetarian fare to my husband. I dusted off something my grandmother's Lebanese friends made: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/brown-lentils-and-rice-with-caramelized-onions I add a few more spices to the dish than this recipe shows- cinnamon, cardamom, sometimes ginger shows up in it. Add some fresh herbs if you have them; I garnish with sliced tomatoes. Served it to my husband...who went for seconds.

She's back! Not completely out of the woods and I'll be cramming pills down her for a couple weeks. Prognosis is good. The whole ordeal has stonkered her pretty well. The cat normally purrs all the time but right now is silent despite being snuggled on my lap. I find myself checking her breathing. O_o

So my cat started getting pickier at her eating...then she stopped eating We took her to the vet, and after a four figure amount plonked on the credit card, all we have is "nonspecific liver issues," "followup ultrasound tomorrow," and "feeding tube may be necessary." They might also take some samples in her liver and gallbladder. They are not sure yet if the issue is infectious or inflammatory, FIP titer came back negative. They've kept her over, doing fluids, meds, etc. The values in her blood work have been worsening. She is only four years old. For future reference, cats are prone to fatty liver issues if they don't eat (for whatever reason). They can turn jaundiced and develop other problems. So if your cat is off her feed...get her to the vet sooner rather than later if you can. We drove over with various yummies trying to get her to eat. She sniffed at them but didn't eat. I got her calmed down and relaxed...still wouldn't eat. They may or may not figure out anything that can be done short of drastic measures. Should have more clue on underlying etiology tomorrow. Ideally, the feeding tube for a few days will suffice to get her system to right itself and she gets better with some short term meds. If not, well, we just love her for the time she has left.

I miss the midwest!

There was a TV/cable special done on her a couple years back starring, iirc Claire Danes

...and made risotto, ate it for dinner, washed the pot, and did pot roast, which Sweetie is enthusiastically nomming down. Good results on both, but I think I need to back off the cooking times a little. The risotto wasn't as "al dente" as I would've liked, but it was waaaaay less time and effort. Melt the butter, sautee the shallots, toast the rice, deglace with the wine, dump in the stock and come back in a few minutes to stir in the cheese. Six minutes under pressure, a few minutes of simmer and you are done. Sweeeeeeeet

So...I've never been much of a breakfast person. Most "normal" breakfast foods are simple starches, which just made me hungrier later. Cheerios, instant oats, pancakes...crash. I don't tolerate eggs very well. When I just fix a sandwich or nuke leftover pizza, that works well... pre-coffee everything better be quick and easy. A few years ago I "discovered" steel cut oats. They stuck with me better but are not always very appealing in texture. I've subscribed to Cook's Illustrated to help get out of a kitchen rut, and came across this: http://whatscookingamerica.net/Bread/PerfectCookedOatmeal.htm (found a link for the recipe that wasn't behind a paywall). It is very good! I can even get my husband to willingly eat it. The main idea is to toast the steel cut oats in a bit of butter (or coconut oil works too) before setting it to simmer. And it sticks with you, too.

Good! They're already giving you a hard time, why go out of your way to make it easy for them?

Not to mention that with a documented disability you can petition for special accommodations on the SAT and other standardized tests (such as an expanded time limit or no time limit). You get the kid to shut up, sit down, and pay attention and then get special treatment for tests.

I'm starting off well. Paid off my medical bills...so no more credit card debt! For the first time, I'm on track to fully fund my Roth. I've bought some new furniture to replace the stuff that's hell on Sweetie's back. And if things continue to go well I may have my car paid off a year early. From here out it's aggressive saving time. Now I just have to get better on the meal planning- with only two of us here we waste more food than we should...

And guys are never out on medical leave? The description matches many male professionals in upper middle age. They also have the same claim to FMLA leave- it's not just women who take it. And that leave is only available once you've worked somewhere at least a year- the vast majority of people don't plan that far ahead. There is loads more I can say on this topic but it's taking things farther afield. As for jobs some men can do and most women can't- I agree with you there. It does color much of my view about women in the military- introducing different fitness benchmarks is bunk imho, and it applies to certain heavy labor jobs as well. A couple of my schoolmates were big girls, strong girls- not fat, just big. That sort of thing is in the statistical tails but you do see it occasionally. They could meet the same fitness benchmarks the guys could. They could haul an injured comrade away from danger. Me? I wasn't quite a hundred pounds when I finished high school. Not a chance in Hades with me. But if my schoolmates met the benchmarks, there's no reason to prevent them from enlisting. There's the argument that there's lots of supporting jobs in the military women can do. Perhaps, but I do wonder about keeping around significant numbers of people who wouldn't qualify for an "honest" combat job. It also increases the chance that someone else gets assigned to the front lines instead...messy debate, that.

Amen to that. This is why my drinking limit is one drink...two IF it's only people I know well... On those types of insults though, I don't cry. I get mad and mean instead. I've always had a wide mean streak. I struggle with it regularly and sometimes it gets really tempting to just let it run... However, my job is a very visible position and so diplomacy is key.

My boss probably did. She apologized on his behalf...and where I work is very lawsuit-happy. I do like where I work though... and I'm hardly the sort to run to HR over the bittiest thing.

I was starting to wonder where all the kids were but now I just got a big group of them. Good thing...we got the Costco bag of candy and that's a lot for leftovers.

Okay. I know I should drop 15 lbs or so. There's been a lot of stress eating at the tail end of my unemployment and settling into a new job. Sweetie could stand to drop a few, too and has mentioned on himself multiple times. I was going to start soon, anyway, since Christmas won't be much this year and there'll be little holiday derailment. Sweetie can join me or not, but if not, his picky self can cook his own high calorie dinners. We're being lazy complacent married people and I'm not making any excuses for it. The other day, though, a co-worker was saying I was looking "a little bit pregnant" with no real lead-in to the comment (not that it'd be any excuse). Frankly I was flabbergasted that he was foolish enough to say that (it was in front of others, including the boss). Guys, remember: don't assume a pregnancy unless you've seen the woman's water breaking. Or gotten an invite to the baby shower. Just...don't. He didn't mean any malice by it but...really?! While my co-worker wouldn't have known the next detail, the pregnancy thing is a sore point. The last few years I've racked up enough medical bills with two gynecologists to pay off the notes on their Lexuses. Practical upshot is that I couldn't have gotten pregnant if Sweetie and I were actively trying...much less any happy surprises. Also, there is still plenty of bias and discrimination against younger women in a professional setting. There's a number of bosses out there who think that just when they've trained you, you'll have a kid and not come back from maternity leave. I worked for a benefits broker for a few years and heard this from a number of small business owners who wanted to exclude their younger workers from the health plan with this view in mind. Hell, some of my profs warned us not to go to a job interview with a wedding or engagement ring on the hand. Long spate of unemployment... and possible pregnancy rumors when, were I pregnant now, I wouldn't be eligible for FMLA leave once the booger was born. Yah...thanks a lot! A Dilbert reference comes to mind, on multiple fronts.

Guys can have the same dynamic, just on different things. The crowd I hang out with, buying a computer rather than assembling one yourself is a cop-out. Or basic car maintenance, or tile jobs, etc. Home brewing is very much a guy thing as well. If you're sewing a button back on or repairing a seam, lots of guys wonder why not to just get it done at the dry cleaner's, but it's a matter of skillset. Now, people give me weird looks when I say I make my own bread, but I find that it's because they've lived on WonderBread and the like their whole lives. If they've had my other baked goods first, they are at least intrigued.

Inland North. This is accurate. It's where I've spent most of my life. I will never get used to the people around here pronouncing "on" like "awwn," though.

Look up Rodin's "Fallen Caryatid," and Heinlein's commentary on it in "Stranger in a Strange Land." I think it will resonate with you.

Thanks, all. Mimimal family drama, but some :frying pan: :frying pan: with my husband. Got back in time for...the government shutdown. Well, Sweetie gets recuperation time I guess. The Scripture reading at the funeral was the Parable of the Wise Virgins, which just kinda made me wince. Grandma was a woman of devout faith and she had a lo-o-ong decline. The lesson I've taken from that one was more to prepare now because you may not be able to prepare later, not so much prepare and wait...and wait...and wait... I know that in this life we might not understand all the suffering we or our loved ones go through. But that parable has to me always seemed more fitting for someone who went suddenly or too young.

...my grandmother died. And so begins the 9 hour trip to the Rust Belt city where half my family is. I came to an insight today on various bits of family baggage. There's a lot of grandmother/granddaughter resemblance, which turns into a lot of mother/daughter tension when daughter reminds mother of Mother... heh. I am Grandma's Mini-Me. Grandma had a good run but unfortunately her body held on much longer than her mind did. She is finally free. Longevity runs in the family; it is not always a blessing. She was a good woman and is in a better place. We will celebrate her life together.

Grandma used to do a liver dumpling soup- your basic beef/veggie soup base, then ground up liver with breadcrumbs, a little egg, and flick it by little bits into the boiling broth. Or chicken soup with kluski. She made a good meatloaf, which my Mom loathed so I never got that at home. I offered to make meatloaf for Sweetie but he is horrified about the very concept. Basically Grandma was very careful to never waste any food. She rarely cooked "poor," but her family could do that because they gardened. Mom...would do shepherd's pie (though ground lamb is hard to come by now). Chili was a regular standby (ground beef & kidney bean base). Bangers n' Mac- the cheapest, nastiest little sausages + boxed Kraft. Won't touch it to this day; it was in rotation too often when one parent was out of work. That and swiss/salisbury steak. There was a combination of egg noodles, sour cream peas, and bacon. Was yummy- also beef stroganoff. She would also slow cook round steak and do up gravy- very cheap and quite yummy when done right. Oh yes...and the pea soup, or the bean soup... HAAAAAAATE. Won't do pea soup. Figured out a better bean soup recipe myself- tastes a lot better with a beef base instead of ham base. Basically, there was a long spell of clinical depression that Mom had (untreated) and it translated to a "hell with it" attitude in the kitchen most nights. She'd taught us to cook by then, but meal planning authority rested with her. Normally she's a very good cook and likes to do so. I have my own frugal standbys, but I learned a lot about Latin American cooking when I studied in Mexico. My "frugal" meals are nothing like Mom's.

Well, in Cincinnati they put chili over spaghetti...

For a marketing class I chose the development of Dasani as my term paper subject (it had just come out at the time). Some of the stuff I found discussed at length the pinning down what mineral mix to add to make it taste best to the most people. It's rather disgusting how much of the time and effort of very intelligent people is wasted with relative...trivialities. Then again, given what Coke does to you, offering bottled water may be the soft drink world's equivalent to CAFE standards in the auto industry. I'd really rather have a faucet filter but Sweetie doesn't like the way they reduce clearance height on the kitchen faucet.

Guys, you want to think twice about neglecting updates on your homeowners and similar policies. A provision called coinsurance (very different than what it means in health insurance!) penalizes you further for under-insuring a building. Many policies have a requirement that you keep your coverage limit within 20% of your actual building cost. If you don't, the amount of money the insurance company gives you is reduced proportionally to the amount you've under-insured your property. This is in addition to the amount If, for whatever reason, you only insured your home for, say, $50K, the insurance company will only pay you five-eighths of that on a claim amount for a total loss! ($50K being 5/8 of the $80K minimum 'required' on that provision for this hypothetical $100K home). Wikipedia's explanation: In property insuranceCoinsurance is a penalty imposed on the insured by the insurance carrier for under reporting/declaring/insuring the value of tangible property or business income. The penalty is based on a percentage stated within the policy and the amount under reported. As an example: A building actually valued at $1,000,000 has an 80% coinsurance clause but is insured for only $750,000. Since its insured value is less than 80% of its actual value, when it suffers a loss, the insurance payout will be subject to the underreporting penalty. For example: It suffers a $200,000 loss. The insured would recover $750,000 ÷ (.80 × 1,000,000) × 200,000 = $187,500 (less any deductible). In this example the underreporting penalty would be $12,500. The most commonly issued coinsurance percentage would be 80% but can be as high as 100%. The latter[100%] would impose the greatest penalty for under reporting. For this reason, it is vital that values of property are accurately reported and updated annually to reflect inflation and other increases in cost. ...this isn't very widely known, and while any decent insurance agent will warn their clients on this, the client has to actually listen (or read the explanation in a letter requesting you to set up a policy review).